


Assume a Virtue If You Have It Not

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: AU, M/M, Warlock Avon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25225066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: The price of getting out of a Trap is a day of virtue. Back on the Liberator, the crew cope with a technical problem.
Relationships: Roj Blake/Kerr Avon, Roj Blake/Travis
Comments: 12
Kudos: 15





	Assume a Virtue If You Have It Not

1\. The Ten of Swords

"What are we doing on your ship?" Blake asked the magus, who was not exactly pointing a staff at him but who nevertheless had the staff locked and loaded, in prime smiting position. "We didn't ask to come here."

Awaiting an answer, Blake looked around the flight deck. It seemed to be a Regalia class cruiser, with a few modifications. There was a viewerscreen, of course, but Blake didn't know why there was a huge cast-iron cauldron set up in front of it, or a tripod with a wide chased dish full of sand next to that. 

The crew positions were set up in three tiers:  
an immense throne at the back, and two tiers of two--well, they might be called chairs for want of a better term--in front. They didn't look at all comfortable or even feasible for a human body, but then perhaps they didn't have to.

"No, of course you didn't. I brought you here. It's educational," the magus said. "And edifying."

"We want no lessons from you," Blake said. "Jenna, teleport now!"

There was a crackle, then the bracelet emitted nothingness of a particular pitch that implied that something absolutely awful had gone wrong.

2\. Liberator

Back on Liberator, Vila heard the signal, and said, "Yes, Blake, I've got it." He pressed the appropriate buttons, and flicked the appropriate levers. Nothing happened. He grasped the levers and pulled.

They came off in his hand.

The entire teleport console crashed into inertia. 

In his lifetime, Vila had heard all of the vilest oaths of the spawn of the prisons, the scum of the spaceports. He had even been close enough to hear what Avon said that time he dropped a hex wrench three feet down into a narrow crevice between two of the battle computers, shattering a series of relays he had spent weeks rebuilding. Vila, scouring his memory, could not think of anything really suitable to the occasion.

"Oh, good golly," he said.

3\. Blake's flat--some five years earlier

"I'll never get enough of you," Blake told his lover. "And always! I'll always want to hold you and touch you and run my hands over your perfect skin. Like cream, it is."

"Oh, go to sleep, Roj" his lover told him. "Look at the time, it's after two in the morning."

It was after two, and the fellows from the Security Service liked to knock down the door some time between three and four. That's when their clientele was most suggestible. It helped if the dead men walking had been asleep, of course.

They could have just drilled out the lock, but it was more dramatic to pound on the door, demanding entrance, followed up by blowing in the door with a micro-mortar. 

Blake's first thought was, they're here. At last. Now I won't have to worry any more, about when it'll happen.

He threw his body over his lover's, and his second thought was, Edward. I'll try to protect you. For all the good it'll do. Goodbye, love.

4\. The Ten of Swords

"What do you want and what will you settle for?" Avon asked. 

The magus looked at him intently. "Oh, are you?" he asked. "I didn't know. Then, you should know how to ask the question. And whom to ask. And the price of knowledge."

Avon walked over to the pan of sand on the tripod, plunged his hands into it, lifted his hands to let the faintly pink grains drain back into the bronze dish, and repeated it six more times.

Then he turned his back to the dish, and the cauldron, and the viewerscreen, and opened the zipper that ran from the left wrist to the elbow of his jacket. Abruptly, almost angrily, he stripped the shirt sleeve away from his forearm. He extended his right hand to the magus, who gave him a long knife. It was more or less the length of Avon's forearm. Its blade was curved on both sides, into a series of rippling arcs. Everything other than the razor-sharp edges was elaborately chased in geometric designs.

As Blake watched, mesmerized by the absolute matter-of-factness of the gesture, Avon slashed the knife twice across his forearm. He held the arm over the cauldron. The blood sizzled when it hit the iron. 

A wraith appeared. Avon spoke to the transparency, as naturally as he would to the com link in his cabin or a teleport bracelet.

"Where are we? And how do we get out?"

"This is Gwaethyrion's ship, the Ten of Swords," the wraith told him. "You'll get out when all of you have behaved virtuously for a day. Just a day."

Gwaethyrion smirked.

"All?" Avon said. "In human languages, 'all' implies more than two."

"You've only paid for two questions," the wraith said.

"'I am not in the giving vein,'" Avon said, and turned away.

He strode back to Blake's side and whispered, "Blake, the others are back home, aren't they? I haven't heard whimpering, so Vila isn't about, I associate Gan with the sounds of splintering dimensional lumber, and I don't see anyone clutching his bruised balls, so Jenna and Cally can't be here."

"Wait here," Gwaethyrion said. "You'll be shown to your cabins, when they're ready." He stalked out impressively.

"You're a warlock," Blake told Avon.

"In a small way. For instance, if you fancy a bit of clairvoyance about what's going to happen here, you're out of luck."

"I didn't know."

"There's a good deal you don't know about me." Avon tested one of the slashes with a fingertip. Good, the blood was dry enough not to stick to the linen. He pulled the sleeve back into place and zipped up th jacket sleeve as well.

"Does your arm hurt?"

"Of course it does. Stop fussing."

"That business with the sand?"

"Purification. If you've killed, then the blood on your hands must be washed clean before you can give your own blood in payment."

"You didn't ask why he's doing this."

"Why bother? It's obvious enough. If you listen closely, you can hear the Maevaillagh crystal that powers the ship singing. Magus Gwaethyrion is counting on our anger, rancor, and fear to flow into it." 

Avon sat down on the least impossible of the crew chairs. The sight of his own blood always made him a little light-headed. "Think of us as a sort of petrol pump for the Immaterial. Or high tea for mutoids."

Gwaethyrion didn't have a teleport. Absent the technology he had to do it by magic, so when he returned, accompanied, there was no shimmer, none of that gradual fading in to the new location. It was more like Schroedinger's Cat. One moment Servalan and Travis weren't there, the next moment they were, entire and opaque.

"All," Gwaethyrion said cheerfully, echoed dolefully by Blake and Avon.

Avon jumped up, drew his Liberator gun, and fired it straight at Servalan. Nothing happened, except that Servalan laughed. "I always suspected you'd be incapable, dear."

"Thank you," Gwaethryion said. "I can run for days, on that."

5\. Liberator

Vila sat down heavily at the teleport console. What else was broken? Well, the ship didn't seem to have blown up, that was a relief. There was still air for him to hyperventilate and lights so he could see just how bloody horrible the situation was. He pressed the com link, and just to be on the safe side, screamed, "Everybody! Get in here! Code Four! Help!!!"

Jenna and Gan were asleep, so it took them a few minutes to get there; Cally just had to run in from the flight deck. 

"It's not my fault, really, it isn't, the thing just came off in my hand."

"Fuck," Jenna said succinctly. She trotted back to the flight deck. "Zen, systems check!"

+Structural integrity 100%. Life support systems intact. Navigational computers and battle computers intact. Teleport system unusable and unsalvageable.+

"Can't you fix it?"

+Such mechanical repairs are not within my capacity.+

"What about auto-repair?"

+The auto-repair is inaccessible because the mechanical malfunction has severed the link between the teleport system and the repair circuits.+

Jenna's return to the teleport area was much slower than her exit from it. "Right. Zen says we're stuffed. He can't fix it and the auto-repair can't fix it."

"Then we'll have to," Gan said.

"Oh, right, like taking candy from a baby." 

"What's your alternate plan, then?" Cally asked Vila.

"Just take off. Too bad for them down there, or wherever they are, but fortunes of war and all that. No more bossy Blake and arrogant Avon. Just us and a load of money."

For a second they all savored the temptation. If I brought Liberator back to Auron, that would certainly count as a success, Cally thought. Yes, I'd have to fight Jenna for the ship, but perhaps if we make her the admiral of the fleet...

"We wouldn't know what to do," Gan said, toying with a vision of freedom.

"We'd know not to try and get killed, more than you can say for some people."

//Vila!// 

"Oh, all right. Yes. But I keep wanting to yell out to Avon to get it sorted, and I can't, can I?"

Gan ran an experimental finger around the edge of the teleport console. "They must have fitted this on somehow, all we have to do is get it off, have a look around, see what's broken and fix it up."

"I don't see a join," Cally said. "So it must have been cast in one piece." She looked for fasteners, came up empty. 

"It might not be that easy to fix," Jenna said. "What are we going to do, put a bit of silver tape on it?"

There was something dark and unsavory under Cally's fingers. "Damn!" she said. "Vila, I told you not to bring your coffee cups in here."

"I don't."

"Well, it's all sticky along here."

"That's from when we first got here, and Avon was sticking explanations onto everything..."

"He wrote up a chart for the wall," Jenna said. "More or less starting with the creation of the Universe and dividing the operation of the teleport into seven hundred or so distinct steps." 

"And we didn't half take the piss, either," Gan said.

"Where's the chart?" Cally asked. 

They all groaned. It must have ended up in the default location for everything nobody could find: in the depths of one of the cupboards in Blake's cabin. Astonishingly, this was something that he had been unable to throw out because it might come in handy, that might come in handy. Cally opened the cabinet beneath the useless teleport, took out a torch, and firmly placed a spare laser probe on the surface, for later use.

6\. The Ten of Swords

Gwaethyrion raised his staff and gestured impressively with it, in the direction of the cauldron. The cauldron hummed, a deep metallic resonance, and ectoplasm began to rise. The ectoplasm shaped itself into a golden crown shimmering blue-white with heat. 

The crown levitated until it hovered about two feet over Servalan's head. Letters of fire sprang up, reading "Charity." The crown moved along until it nestled over Travis' head. The letters disappeared and re-formed: "Temperance." It was like playing Liar's Poker.

When they saw Blake crowned, and read "Prudence," the other three laughed.

"That's your assignment, then," Gwaethyrion said. "Just go a day manifesting that virtue."

"How can we tell which?" Blake asked.

"Surely your friend and ally will tell you?"

Avon didn't have to guess at the inscription on his diadem. "Hope," obviously. Because it was so long ago that he had first looked Despair in the face.

"Run along now," the magus said.

7\. The Ten of Swords

Blake wondered idly who--or what--would show them to their cabins. It was "what," more or less. Parallel force walls sprang up, and it was clear that their cuddly embrace would move much closer to boa constrictor territory if their human contents didn't move along. Sharpish. Travis was escorted (hived?) off first, then Servalan. 

Halfway down a corridor, a door opened and closed--no, more like disappeared and reappeared--and Blake found himself in a small room. Travis was sitting on the bed.

"Bleeding hell, this is all I needed," Blake said.

"Roj." Travis said. 

Blake tried to open the door, but was unsurprised when it wouldn't budge. 

"We're supposed to confront each other," Travis said. "We can't leave until that's done."

"Happen one of us won't leave," and there was little doubt of Blake's prediction of the outcome.

"Maybe we can't do any violence here. Your toyboy didn't get far shooting Servalan, did he?"

Really, Blake thought, the pleasure of imagining Avon's face if he had heard that, could almost be worth whatever was going to happen.

"Toyboy? The closest I've come to having sex with Avon is passing him the cruet at the dinner table."

"I'll not believe it," Travis said. "If he was mine, I wouldn't wait five minutes before knowing what that hot mouth could do to my prick."

If he was mine? No bloody way--if only--"Avon doesn't understand," Blake said. "He thinks I'm averse--or afraid--to have a man touch me. Well, by God he doesn't know what happened the first time I did."

"When I was whole, and perfect, you loved me," Travis said.

"Love YOU? I never did," Blake said. "I loved the man that I thought you were. He was the first hallucination the Federation ever gave me. I've always hated you, from the moment I knew what you were."

"I did my job."

"You betrayed me. You betrayed all of us. I trusted you with my secrets and their lives. You informed on them. They all died."

"_You_ didn't. You're still alive. I had chance after chance, and I let you go."

"The hell you did. I escaped."

8\. Blake's First Arrest

There were three men in uniform, faceless within gray bubbles. The one in front gestured with his carbine toward Blake. "Get up. You can get dressed, but don't take long about it. And don't get any ideas." 

The one in the middle prodded Blake in the ribs, hard, with his carbine. "Now! He said now!"

The third one went over to Edward, who hadn't been asleep at all. The third one carried a folded uniform, nothing but thick darkness folded over shadows. There was a handgun balanced on the top of the pile.

"Captain Travis," he said, "I've brought you your uniform, sir. And your service weapon."

Travis laughed. Blake grabbed the gun, and fired into the laugh, and into Edward's face, and into the arm thrown up to protect his face. 

The second man wanted to kill Blake, but the first one talked him out of it, orders were orders, so they wrestled Blake down to the ground and handcuffed him and battered him into unconsciousness with their fists and boots and carbines, while the third man frantically called for an ambulance. Officer Down. Need backup immediately.

9\. The Ten of Swords

The only furniture in the small cabin was a bed. Not an excessively large one. Avon wondered whether he should lie down on it with his boots still on, to demonstrate his contempt to whatever was manning (if that's the word) the surveillance monitor. Or whether he should take his boots off to be more comfortable. No doubt it would be a long night. Or a long siege.

"You can sleep on the floor," he told Servalan cheerfully.

Servalan swept her glance up and down the paragon of chivalry on the bed. In the long run, given resources and a full arsenal, she would certainly bet on herself to be able to eliminate Avon as a threat. But she also knew who she would back, in a crude punchup in an enclosed place. She sat down on the floor, with her back against the side of the mattress, and stretched out her legs. They nearly reached the door. 

Which, they already knew, didn't open (there was no doorknob, or lever, or anything else they could see on their side of the door). The hinges were resistant to the hatpin Servalan had sewn to the inside back seam of her white gown, and to the lockpick in the heel of Avon's shoe and to the unbinding spell he threw in, even though he'd never yet succeeded in getting it to work. 

"Avon," she said, elongating the second syllable in a caressive motivational attempt. "If you're a warlock, couldn't you celebrate the Black Mass--if you had a willing priestess?--and get us out of here?"

"I suppose I might do," Avon said, "But I wouldn't." He gestured toward the polished metal wall of the cabin, where Servalan could see two blurred reflections. Two blurred reflections. "Whatever I've done, I avoided surrendering my soul."

"I don't find your pretense of scrupulosity very convincing."

"Oh, it's not that. I'm saving the final throw of the dice, for when I really need it. It's pathetic to panic too soon and surrender when worse is yet to come." 

Avon stood up, and prowled around the room. He stopped, with his back to Servalan, near one corner. Half a minute later, there was a metallic whine, and half a minute after that, a door in the wall popped open, and a tray floated out. 

Avon performed a brief charism of discernment. Not poisoned or drugged. All right then. There were two metal beakers, moist and beaded, on the tray, which also held half-a-dozen concentrated food bars in bright foil wrappings. He wasn't hungry enough to tackle the food bars--he had been hoping more for something along the lines of a plate of biscuits--but he put three of them in the inside pocket of his jacket, in case he needed them later. He sipped appreciatively at the chilled, sparkling mineral water.

The tray floated over to Servalan, who hadn't had a concentrated food bar since boot camp and didn't seek to renew the acquaintance. She was sorry to find out that the beaker was filled with water, but decided there were many, many worse alternatives. The Shiraz she had been served on Galileo 16, for instance. As the tray floated back toward the wall, Avon snagged it and put the rest of the food bars in his jacket.

"You need a better spellbook," Servalan said.

"Gwaethyrion needs a better food dispenser. Nothing Magickal about it--that's just where they put the dispenser in the cabins on Regalia class cruisers." Why didn't Servalan know that? Avon decided that, wherever she went, someone else was responsible for getting in the meals.

"I've turned down the--well, I suppose you would say professional--possibility, but what do you say to a recreational one?" he asked her. "We can't get through the door, we haven't got a chess set, there aren't any cupboards so there isn't anything to read, but we have got a bed and, do you know, I've always fancied you? It's hard to put into words what attracts me..."

"An even number of chromosomes?" was Servalan's suggestion.

Avon pressed his lips together, and pressed on. "But in your individual case, those taupe eyes, I think. I've never seen that color on anyone else. And it's not as if we were under any sort of chastity restriction."

"I think it's your upper lip," Servalan said. "It's not just that the line of your mouth turns downward--that's true of a lot of people." She reached up and traced from one corner of his mouth to the other. "But on an ordinary face, the shape of the top lip has peaks. An optimistic sign. Your mouth, Avon? It just turns down, and down. Like a recumbent parenthesis. Saying, "no." And "no." But I'd never maintain my credibility as a leader if word got out that I fornicated with Blake's catamite."

"You've nothing to worry about in that direction, Servalan. Blake? May have fumbled around a bit in the Junior School cloakroom, not that he'd remember, but nothing since then. An utterly solid and stolid and prosaic heterosexual."

Servalan laughed, loudly and unkindly. 

Avon looked surprised, then lay back on the bed, his hands behind his head, smiling sweetly. 

After awhile, he began to think about the problem at hand. Could Blake and I take over this ship?--it's not as good as Liberator on the natural level, but its Magickal resources might make up for that. Perhaps Servalan and Travis would throw in with us--then it'd be a question of who'd win, two on two. Then again, perhaps three on one. Servalan might be amusing company, at least in the short range.

Liberator guns don't work here (hang about, it could just be mine. Blake ought to test his), and I've no idea how many corporate and discorporate entities fight under Gwaethyrion's banner. 

He tried a simple spell of inquiry, which didn't require athame, athenor, herbs, or candles, but the information was too strongly shielded.

Can we get back, though? he wondered. Blake is awfully fond of Liberator, although from the point of view of title we don't own that any more than we own this one. But if he wants it perhaps he should have it. 

Maybe, he thought, that lot back there can get this sorted. Oh, I hope so. I certainly left perfectly adequate instructions for operating and repairing all the systems. So if this is a simple mechanical problem at Liberator's end, perhaps everything will be all right.

There are a few low-powered spells that can be performed on the fly, so to speak. Avon tried to invoke protection for Blake, for himself, for the Liberator, for its crew. I don't know if that's doing anything, he thought. You never know--all you can do is try.

10\. Liberator

Cally crouched under the teleport console, shining the torch upward. "Nothing--no, wait, over here--looks like a small recessed bolt."

"It says to undo the four bolts, then slide the top of the console sideways."

Really, auto-repair or no auto-repair, it was amazing how much dust and general unidentified matter had sifted into the console. Cally clicked her tongue and looked for the miniature vacuum cleaner to tidy it up.

Jenna's slender fingers easily retrieved the broken bits of metal and cast resin from the bottom of the teleport console. "Do you think we could stick them back on again?"

"You can forget about welding and all," Gan said. "That's herculaneum, we haven't got a blowtorch that could come near melting it. And if it did, and even if we shielded all that resin, it'd melt underneath the shields."

"How about adhesive?" Cally asked. 

11\. The Ten of Swords

Gwaethyrion sat at a round table in his cabin. His familiar, who manifested in the form of a baby snow leopard (albeit with metallic golden eyes instead of gray-blue ones) crouched on the table. 

"She didn't mean it kindly," Gwaethyrion said.

"But we have to concede that the effect was beneficent," said his familiar. ("Benefithent," rather--Woddys had a pronounced lisp.) "So we must chalk it up to charity. Willing evil, doing good. What d'ye expect? Occupational hazard innit. And as for the fellow with her, I distinctly heard him say 'I hope so.'"

"Pure vanity, I'd call it," Gwaethyrion argued. "He told the crew what to do, so he thinks the credit is his."

Woddys hissed through its sharp little teeth.

"Oh, very well, the clock is still running," Gwaethyrion said, sipping mead out of a martini glass. Then he downed the shot of absinthe on the side. A preternatural boilermaker. "Let's see how the other two are getting on."

12\. The Ten of Swords

That there was only one eye to glare and glower at, and soon beseech, Blake, made its expression all the more poignant. "I know why you had to do what you did," Travis said. "I forgive you."

"Of all the brass neck..." Blake sputtered. The Maevaillagh crystal's song shimmered a little higher, a little faster.

"I still love you. I still need you."

"I won't listen to this nonsense."

"Good," Travis said. "No words. Just this." He pressed Blake's hand to the undamaged side of his face. 

It would not have taken undue strength to pull away--and it was the flesh-and-blood hand that gripped Blake's--but somehow he remained there. 

We may be through with the past, but the past isn't through with us.

13\. Liberator

For the information of those who may need to repair a DSV when there is no certified service technician onboard, it should be noted that you cannot glue herculaneum objects back together with instant-bond adhesive. Long-cure epoxy doesn't work either.

"Aren't there any spares?" Cally asked.

"I bet if you check Avon's log you'll see that these ARE the spares," Vila said. "One day a while back, I was going on watch when he was coming off and moaning about what a job it was to replace them."

"Just one set of spares?" Gan asked. "Doesn't seem very practical for a ship this size."

"It's no stupider than not having any anti-radiation drugs," Cally said. "We could have been in real trouble one day, considering the sorts of places we go, if we hadn't made a point of picking some up." She didn't say, "When I marked up the inventory list and noticed the gaps," but everybody heard it anyway.

Gan went methodically through Storerooms One through Six. There was a clipboard in each, holding sheets and sheets in Avon's minute, beautiful handwriting (overarticulated, like his speech). But everyone had got out of the habit of signing things in and out, and there was little real correspondence between the inventory records and the inventory. Storeroom Four was supposed to have a box of spare teleport handles, but the box itself was nowhere in evidence.

14\. The Ten of Swords

Gwaethyrion grinned and depressed the plunger on a gadget that had two faces, like a chess clock. "Stop the clock!" he said. "Another 24 hours to go! At this rate, they'll never get out."

Chastity is a subset of Temperance, so Travis, manifestly, had failed in his assignment. And, although it would be hard to dislike him for it, Blake was not at all Prudent in failing to dispatch his quondam lover when he had him at so severe a disadvantage--for Travis fell asleep in his arms. Blake's chest was damp with tears. So indeed was his face.

15\. Liberator

"We've got the bits," Cally said. "Couldn't we put them into the fabricator in the Wardrobe Room and enter the specs and have it build us new ones?"

"Those cracks look pretty deep," Vila said. "Might not be enough stuff to go around."

Jenna skimmed through the teleport instructions, which took awhile. It wasn't that she was a slow reader, only that the instructions were nothing if not copious. "No specs."

"Well, why should there be?" Cally said absently. "No point in copying them out when they're in the...."

Vila dived under the teleport console, but none of the cupboards yielded a copy of the manual. "Where'd we put it...where'd we put it?"

An intensive search finally turned it up, propping up the short leg of one of the tables in Crewroom B. Nobody ever RTFM except in extremis, right?

Jenna returned from the Treasure Room, looking regretful, and carrying a pair of pliers and something crumpled in her fist. When she opened her hand, there was a necklace of fine-spun herculaneum filaments, studded with dozens of tiny hologems. She cut an inch off the bottom of the necklace, then started picking out the hologems. 

Cally entered the specs into the Wardrobe Room synthesizer. The broken handles and the herculaneum mesh seemed ludicrously tiny, as they tumbled into the raw materials bin. 

The front panel lit up: *Specifications Accepted. Synthesis Time  
.0524 Standard Time Units.* 

Everybody breathed.

"I'll get us a drink, shall I?"

Twenty-five minutes later, they were standing in front of the synthesizer. 

"There's never a countdown readout on anything you really WANT to see, is there?" Vila asked.

At 0000, the retrieval chute popped open. The chute, of course, was designed for much larger objects, so they had to up-end Cally and dangle her over the bin to fish out the replacement handles. They were warm in her palm.

"Should we try now or wait?" Cally asked.

"I couldn't wait," Gan said. "We've just got to take our best shot."

Just after Cally propped open the manual on the credenza behind the teleport console, next to the relevant portion of the instructions, and just before Jenna took up the laser probe to try to fit the new handles, Vila spoke up.

"We need a kind of tether, like, or something on a reel. Y'know--it's a long, long way down if you drop 'em."

Cally got a couple of rolls of dental floss out of the Medical unit, and stuck the loose end to the handle assemblies with a bit of tape.

Christ, Jenna thought, no wonder Avon didn't like replacing these. You had to go in blind, drop the handle into place between its carriages, then thread through a bolt and tighten on a nut at each end, with damn little clearance. 

Gan came back from the medical unit with a hemostat. "Here, I'll hold the resin part in place, so you can use both your hands for the bolts and nuts."

Vila was going to put the top back on, but the other three convinced him, with eloquent looks, that the outcome was far from certain. Jenna, feeling she was about to turn blue, tried the handles.

Nothing. 

"I expect you've just tightened the nuts too much," Gan said. "Take a deep breath, then have another go with the micro-spanner."

This time the damn things were too loose...

16\. The Ten of Swords

Gwaethyrion decided that there was nothing like a festive board, where many were gathered together, to work up some real hostility. (He also wondered how long it would take Blake and Travis to locate the food dispenser--he did not think either of them as ruthlessly pragmatic as Avon.) So he told the kitchen sopron to excel itself, and told his guests (via commlink) that their presence was requested in the Main Salon in three minutes.

"Drop your cocks and grab your socks!" Woddys said, too quietly to be picked up by the commlink.

Avon prodded doubtfully at his golden charger with a mother-of-pearl handled fork. Magickal banquets all too often proved insubstantial. This, however, appeared to be real food. He was just glad that he had been served something of acceptable elegance (Thai red curry with duck and a fragrant heap of jasmine rice). Luckily for his reputation, the sopron had not produced what he craved when he was really nervous--a heap of chips half-drowned in HP Sauce, and a chocolate milkshake.

Blake and Travis both dug into plates of roast beef, although Blake had roast potatoes and green peas; Travis had Yorkshire pudding and sprouts. Servalan ate a few forkfuls of poached turbot, then put down her silverware. Woddys refilled her glass--this was NOT Shiraz Galileo 16.

The coffee cups asked "Black or white?" but the question never got answered. Coffee and tablecloth became one, as the ship hit a Thaumaturgy Field and rocked from side to side. Avon reached out as Blake was thrown out of his chair. They landed on the deck, bounced, and rotated through about 160 degrees. Just at that moment, their teleport bracelets crackled.

17\. Liberator, At Last

"Blake?" Gan said. "Are you ready to come up? We've fixed the teleport. All of us did, working together."

"I'm jolly proud of you," Blake said, "But I'd rather discuss it in person."

A pile of Blake and Avon shimmered into the teleport bay. Avon, who was mostly underneath, looked up at the four of them. "Thank you," he said. "Now naff off the lot of you."

He removed his left hand from where it was, lingeringly, unless of course he was attempting a diabolical familiarity. He put his left hand on the middle of Blake's back, and raised his right hand from where it was (the floor) and laced his fingers.

Blake looked extremely surprised, but not displeased. "What's that in aid of?" 

"Still in an incongruously cheerful mood from getting out. I'm desperately in love with you. I generally don't like you. Somewhere there may be a tiny seed of loving you."

"Scattered on stony ground," Blake said.

"Or a cell that could metastasize."

"Travis said you were my toyboy," Blake said.

"Servalan called me your catamite. But then she's been more expensively educated. In fact I would have expected something more allusive. Ganymede...Corydon..."

"Know a lot about it, do you?"

"What I've read." But not only.

"We're the laughing-stock of the Space Command, he said."

"There's not much we could do to make them like us. I don't anticipate that you're going to quit."

"The name and the game?"

"As well hung for a sheep as for a lamb?"

"Is there a hyphen in that?"

"Take it as you like."

"Really? Heads or tails?"

"Heads, say, for the first time. So we can both do it at once."

### As Above, So Below ###

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the first fics I ever wrote, and where I launched my headcanons of Pre-TWB Blake/Travis and Faustian experimentalist! Avon. The B plot back on Lib was inspired by that time when the On/Off switch fell off my desktop computer and I had to turn it on and off with a chopstick.


End file.
